1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the field of cellular communication, and more particularly, to a femtocell based system.
2. Related Art
Modern cellular handsets provide today a large range of services: Voice calls, SMS, Mails, Data browsing, MMS, instant messaging, browsing, etc. Nevertheless, some of these services are inappropriate in different environments or even disturbing. Examples: handsets ringing in a cinema or a theatre, during live broadcasting, etc. The disturbance of such services can be both to the environment (people/devices around the end user) or to the user himself (losing focus or distracting him).
It is desirable to protect specific areas at specific times that in such environments some of the services will be restricted. Nevertheless it is clear that the transaction/service initiator cannot be aware of the end user location therefore cannot avoid the disturbance.
A brute force approach is to locate a jammer in the area to be protected. The disadvantage is that the end user losses all way of communication. In many scenarios, for example public places this is even illegal. Imagine a Cinema, a doctor in stand by cannot be avoided being called.
The user itself may choose to protect himself or the area. For example, switching to vibration mode, disabling features on the handsets, etc. The disadvantage of this approach is that it involves a voluntary activity which not always happens. For example the user may malfunction the handset, forgets or doesn't want to cooperate with the environment request.
WIPO Publication No. 2009085608, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a mobile device's or mobile station's access control method for e.g. analog or digital cellular system, involves determining precise geographic location of mobile device, and limiting access of mobile device to wireless communication network.
WIPO Publication No. 0130099, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a cellular mobile communication system using code division multiple access, has control unit to determine whether mobile unit is within spatial portion based on carrier wave characteristics of received signal.
European Patent Document No. 2071878, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a radio connection method of user terminal to picocell base station for wireless telecommunications systems, involves making user terminal find match between received unique identifier and identifier on list so as to send authorizing message.
European Patent Document No. 0813801, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a cellular communication system, esp. for serving large office building—has base station as well as overlapping capsules in each cell receiving and transmitting traffic channels and receiving random access channels.
Prior to setting forth the background of the related art, it may be helpful to set forth definitions of certain terms that will be used hereinafter. The term “SMS” as used herein in this application, is defined as a text message included within a Short Message Service; the term “MMS” as used herein in this application, is defined as a message via a Multimedia Messaging Service.
The invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the reference number.